Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [119]
“Ride!”
Yraen kicked the horse hard, and the gray leapt forward, dashing free of the mist and pounding down a proper packed-dirt road. When Yraen glanced back, he saw a wisp of the pearly mist hanging over a meadow, where white cows with rusty-red ears grazed in bovine indifference. The mist blew away. He slowed his stable-bound horse to a walk before it foundered itself in the sheer joy of being free, then rose in the stirrups for a good look round. He recognized the road immediately as a place he’d seen before, but he couldn’t put a name to his location. For all Dallandra’s talk of the hells opening, no one shared the road with him, and no more did he see enemies in the surrounding meadows.
But Jill had warned him that there might be enemies invisible to his human sight. He sat back into the saddle, then transferred both reins to his left hand and drew his sword with his right. There was never any harm in riding ready for trouble during a time of war. Automatically, he swung the sword in a wide arc to loosen his arm. Though he saw not a thing, he felt the steel blade catch and drag for the barest of moments on—something. Something which shrieked, a thin sound like a mewling seabird. The hair stood up on the back of his neck.
“Be gone!”
Like a madman in the seeming-empty road, Yraen swung his sword round and about, sweeping it through the air to this side and that, twisting in the saddle to swing it behind him, while his battle-trained gelding walked steadily on, no matter who or what shrieked and howled and whimpered. All at once they were gone, whatever they’d been. The sword swung through nothing; the cries stopped. Panting and sweating, Yraen paused his horse in the middle of the road and realized that a child was watching him. Dressed in a dirty brown smock, the boy carried a wooden crook—the cowherd, no doubt. He stood as if ensorcelled himself, his mouth slack, his eyes wide, in utter stupefaction at what he’d just seen.
“Here!” Yraen called out. “Where does this road lead?”
The boy considered, unblinking. “Which way?” he said at last.
“Both ways.”
“Ah.” Another long pause, then a point. “Dun Trebyc, that way.” Another point. “The hills, that way.”
“Then my thanks to you.”
Yraen turned his horse in the direction of Dun Trebyc. As he jogged off, he was hoping that the child was telling the truth, wondering, in fact, if the child were a real child or just some dweomer illusion, invented by an invisible enemy. Yet now that he had a name for the road, he could remember it better. He and Rhodry had actually ridden this way with Lord Erddyr, when they’d been traveling to Gwerbret Drwmyc’s adjudication, only a few years past.
What Yraen couldn’t know was that he’d fought only a skirmish, that the real danger lay behind him in the mist. Dallandra had just released his horse and sent it forward when she heard the howl, shrieking out of the mists around her. She spun round and saw an enormous wolf, all red eyes and white teeth, charging straight for her. Dallandra leapt into the air and changed as she leapt into the image of the linnet, calling out as she swooped upward on gray wings. In an instant, Alshandra became the night-hawk, screaming again as she rose, wings beating, to gain height in the misty sky. Dallandra dropped, hit cool grass, and changed back into her woman’s form.
Ahead, a dark spot in the swirling mist, stood her gate. She ran for it, heard the whir of wings as the nighthawk stooped, ran and ran, felt her heart pounding and her lungs aching like fire as the huge bird, its talons flashing like knives, swept